SCOTUS - AA ... news from the future

[Oleg]

Keeping talking of generational wealth doesn't make it so.

Generational wealth is an observable fact. Families pass assets. It is delusional to deny the existence of generational wealth.

Can you name any families today that trace their wealth to the antebellum period? Can’t think of any. Newsome’s wealth comes from the Getty oil fortune. Anderson Cooper is a Vanderbilt. Jobs, Gates, Trump, Musk, and Buffett, all new wealth.

 

[Metaphor]

Personality science is a thing.

What are the 16 Personality Types? By [Myer Briggs]

So Asians have bad personalities?

Another straw man.

Then why does Harvard use this to discriminate against Asians?

That has yet to be determined. Why would Harvard want to discrinate against Asians?

Because Harvard has a ideological beliefs and untested premises about the desirable composition of its student body, and, if it relied solely on admission measures such as academic performance, academic aptitude, and extra-curriculars, there would be too many Asians in its student body.

Do you have proof of this or is this something you removed from your hind quarters?

Is that a good faith request? Which part are you disputing?

 

[Metaphor]

Why do I bother? The same MAGA racists are here dominating the thread as they do on every interesting topic.

Who in the thread is a "MAGA racist"?

 

[Oleg]

How the heck not?

It's an open secret that the black admits overwhelming come from high income families, are biracial, or are children of African or Carrbbean immigrants.

I don't know about the overwhelming part of it but fundamentally this is what happens--AA is easy street for those who would have made it anyway, it does almost nothing for those it's supposed to be helping.

Maybe not overwhelming, but it’s alot.

But affirmative action is very often not targeted at individuals who, because of disadvantage, are achieving below their potential. Seventy-one percent of Harvard’s Black and Hispanic students come from wealthy backgrounds. A tiny fraction attended underperforming public high schools. First- and second-generation African immigrants, despite constituting only about 10 percent of the U.S. Black population, make up about 41 percent of all Black students in the Ivy League, and Black immigrants are wealthier and better educated than many native-born Black Americans.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/30/affirmative-action-supreme-court-college-admissions/

 

[ZiprHead]

Jobs, Gates, Trump, Musk, and Buffett, all new wealth.

The only one that was new wealth was Jobs.

Gates was given hundreds of thousands by his parents to start Microsoft (selling someone elses product, BTW). Trump was given millions from his father and would have done better by simply investing in a stock index fund than he did with his real estate ventures. Musk's family was very wealthy, his father being a property developer and half owner of an emerald mine. And Buffett's father was a US Congressman. That's a pretty damn good way to get seed money.

 

[Oleg]

Jobs, Gates, Trump, Musk, and Buffett, all new wealth.

The only one that was new wealth was Jobs.

Gates was given hundreds of thousands by his parents to start Microsoft (selling someone elses product, BTW). Trump was given millions from his father and would have done better by simply investing in a stock index fund than he did with his real estate ventures. Musk's family was very wealthy, his father being a property developer and half owner of an emerald mine. And Buffett's father was a US Congressman. That's a pretty damn good way to get seed money.

The point is none of this wealth is antebellum.

 

[ZiprHead]

Jobs, Gates, Trump, Musk, and Buffett, all new wealth.

The only one that was new wealth was Jobs.

Gates was given hundreds of thousands by his parents to start Microsoft (selling someone elses product, BTW). Trump was given millions from his father and would have done better by simply investing in a stock index fund than he did with his real estate ventures. Musk's family was very wealthy, his father being a property developer and half owner of an emerald mine. And Buffett's father was a US Congressman. That's a pretty damn good way to get seed money.

The point is none of this wealth is antebellum.

None of these people came from the antebellum south so I don't see what your point is.

 

[ZiprHead]

The sons of slaveholders quickly recovered their fathers’ wealth

A new paper quantifies how quickly Southern planter elites recovered from the civil war

www.economist.com

Socialism never took hold in America, John Steinbeck allegedly quipped, because the poor saw themselves not as an exploited proletariat, but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires. Yet in the case of southern slaveholders, who lost much of their wealth after the abolition of slavery in America and General William Sherman’s scorched-earth “march to the sea”, those millionaires who were indeed temporarily embarrassed seemed to recover quite quickly. That is the surprising result of a meticulous study of historical census data by three economists, Philipp Ager, Leah Boustan and Katherine Eriksson.

Before the civil war, the South was deeply unequal. Among white households, those at the 90th percentile of the wealth distribution owned 14 times as much as those at the median. By contrast, in today’s seemingly inegalitarian times, the ratio among white households is just 9.5 to one. Roughly 50% of the wealth in the antebellum South was held in slaves. After the surrender of the Confederacy in 1865, all this disappeared: wealth for the top 1% dropped by 76% between the censuses of 1860 and 1870. This had the effect of reducing inequality—but only temporarily. By the next census, in 1880, the sons of slaveholders had recovered the wealth standings of their fathers compared with those who grew up in non-slaveholding households. By 1900, they had surpassed them.

 

[laughing dog]

Keeping talking of generational wealth doesn't make it so.

Generational wealth is an observable fact. Families pass assets. It is delusional to deny the existence of generational wealth.

Can you name any families today that trace their wealth to the antebellum period? Can’t think of any. Newsome’s wealth comes from the Getty oil fortune. Anderson Cooper is a Vanderbilt. Jobs, Gates, Trump, Musk, and Buffett, all new wealth.

I realize you feel you are bringing up something relevant, but you are not. First, generational wealth simply means wealth passed down the family. It can be from generations before or from the immediate previous one. So, your question about antebellum wealth is truly pointless.

Second, since no one is claiming the generational wealth is the only source of success, your bringing up newly wealthy people is also pointless.

 

[Oleg]

The sons of slaveholders quickly recovered their fathers’ wealth

A new paper quantifies how quickly Southern planter elites recovered from the civil war

www.economist.com

Socialism never took hold in America, John Steinbeck allegedly quipped, because the poor saw themselves not as an exploited proletariat, but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires. Yet in the case of southern slaveholders, who lost much of their wealth after the abolition of slavery in America and General William Sherman’s scorched-earth “march to the sea”, those millionaires who were indeed temporarily embarrassed seemed to recover quite quickly. That is the surprising result of a meticulous study of historical census data by three economists, Philipp Ager, Leah Boustan and Katherine Eriksson.

Before the civil war, the South was deeply unequal. Among white households, those at the 90th percentile of the wealth distribution owned 14 times as much as those at the median. By contrast, in today’s seemingly inegalitarian times, the ratio among white households is just 9.5 to one. Roughly 50% of the wealth in the antebellum South was held in slaves. After the surrender of the Confederacy in 1865, all this disappeared: wealth for the top 1% dropped by 76% between the censuses of 1860 and 1870. This had the effect of reducing inequality—but only temporarily. By the next census, in 1880, the sons of slaveholders had recovered the wealth standings of their fathers compared with those who grew up in non-slaveholding households. By 1900, they had surpassed them.

This just shows the resilience of heredity. One of my favorite examples is from China, where the descendants of nobles and landed gentry - who were dispossessed of their property by the Communists and Cultural Revolution - now form China’s economic and political elite.

 

[Oleg]

Second, since no one is claiming the generational wealth is the only source of success, your bringing up newly wealthy people is also pointless.

I’d agree with you. It really has little impact when we can see that the children of poor immigrants are able to excel; until the Harvard admission officer chooses to discriminate against them.

 

[laughing dog]

Second, since no one is claiming the generational wealth is the only source of success, your bringing up newly wealthy people is also pointless.

I’d agree with you. It really has little impact when we can see that the children of poor immigrants are able to excel; until the Harvard admission officer chooses to discriminate against them.

Once again, your conclusion does not follow from your premise. No one claims the transfer of gernerational wealth is the only path to success. So pointing to success stories using different paths does not rebut the effect of generational wealth.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

The sons of slaveholders quickly recovered their fathers’ wealth

A new paper quantifies how quickly Southern planter elites recovered from the civil war

www.economist.com

Socialism never took hold in America, John Steinbeck allegedly quipped, because the poor saw themselves not as an exploited proletariat, but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.

~'There is an inherent flaw in the human mind that makes our cause a pathetic joke.' This is from memory and spoken or written by an American Socialist around the turn of the century whose name I can't remember. The funny thing is that the IWW would get massive numbers of sign ups, step in, win a strike... and then the membership would dissipate. People don't want to risk what they have to maybe get a little bit more. Of course, back in those days, there was no net. These days, there is a net, but people are castigated for even daring to look like an Oliver Twist and ask for more. Quite perverse, really.

In the US these days lots of people have bought the corporate line on mergers, minimum wage, and most other aspects that make living harder for the worker. And people have been convinced that living in poverty is the dream! None of it makes sense.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Keeping talking of generational wealth doesn't make it so.

Generational wealth is an observable fact. Families pass assets. It is delusional to deny the existence of generational wealth.

How much meaningful inheritance is there??

There is more to inheritance than cash. There is property too! This is the biggest one, as white America fled to the suburbs, blacks weren't allowed to. You think that housing prices have been static for a century?

The housing boom for my parents let my dad retire early. My Dad didn't have a lot of money, but the value of their house quintupled over a period of 20 years. He was able to buy another house outright, and partially retire (just needed to work for health insurance). That helped the bottom line, pay for other things, which directly impacts me because now that he is dead, my Mom is doing better than she would have, if it weren't for real estate. Otherwise, I'd be bearing that cost.

The housing limitations had a detrimental impact on blacks in America, and their ability to acquire WEALTH. Long story short, the blacks were sabotaged. And they intentionally sabotaged. It had an enormous impact on them. Even the ones who managed to acquire wealth in the turn of the century, had it stolen from them, and they had no recourse to fix that wrong. Blacks couldn't even fuck white people, that was a crime!

That you think this isn't relevant, and that ignoring AA things will work out in the end is just naïve. If we don't provide them a small hand up, they'll become a permanent underclass.

Far, far more important is the parenting. That's passed to every child.

Now there is some oversimplified bullshit. Otherwise, children of parents should all have the same traits. You couldn't have a struggling alcoholic and successful professional.

 

[Elixir]

If we don't provide them a small hand up, they'll become a permanent underclass.

Amazing that this has to be pointed out. It's been 400+ years - how "permanent" can it get?
The overweening fear that "they're going to take what's MIIIINE!" completely obscures the truth from a lot of people.

Can you name any families today that trace their wealth to the antebellum period? Can’t think of any. Newsome’s wealth comes from the Getty oil fortune. Anderson Cooper is a Vanderbilt. Jobs, Gates, Trump, Musk, and Buffett, all new wealth.

Yeah - MINE.
Not Rockefeller- level wealth, but enough to sustain for generations from the early 1800s until the 1960s.
There are hundreds or thousands or hundreds of thousands of cases like mine for every hyper-wealthy JP Morgan type.

 

[Oleg]

There is more to inheritance than cash.

The most important inheritance is your parents’ genes. The finding that cognition and behavior are

Second, since no one is claiming the generational wealth is the only source of success, your bringing up newly wealthy people is also pointless.

I’d agree with you. It really has little impact when we can see that the children of poor immigrants are able to excel; until the Harvard admission officer chooses to discriminate against them.

Once again, your conclusion does not follow from your premise. No one claims the transfer of gernerational wealth is the only path to success. So pointing to success stories using different paths does not rebut the effect of generational wealth.

Yet, as it appears, if the effect of generational wealth is so miniscule, why mention it at all?

 

[Oleg]

There is more to inheritance than cash.

Yes! The most signifcant and impactful inheritence is your parents' genes. The finding that cognitive and behavior traits are heritable is quite rebust. Like that adopted children take after their biological parents. Even the communist couldn't erase the strength of heredity.

Cognitive development and social policy - PubMed

The city of Warsaw was razed at the end of World War II and rebuilt under a socialist government whose policy was to allocate dwellings, schools, and health facilities without regard to social class. Of the 14,238 children born in 1963 and living in Warsaw, 96 percent were given the Raven's...

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

 

[Elixir]

It has apparently never occurred to Ollie that if Harvard was to accept only those with the highest academic scores, there would be few Americans - and even fewer white Americans admitted. The ones that would make it would be legacy admission, so Ollie - unless, as I suspect, he’s a foreign National - would have a near zero chance.

 

[Swammerdami]

Keeping talking of generational wealth doesn't make it so.

Generational wealth is an observable fact. Families pass assets. It is delusional to deny the existence of generational wealth.

Paul Krugman is a fan of Piketty's book and said he was quite surprised to learn — as Piketty demonstrated with much evidence — the large portion of income disparity that is attributable to inheritance.

 

[Oleg]

It has apparently never occurred to Ollie that if Harvard was to accept only those with the highest academic scores, there would be few Americans - and even fewer white Americans admitted. The ones that would make it would be legacy admission, so Ollie - unless, as I suspect, he’s a foreign National - would have a near zero chance.

The stated purpose of Affirmative Action is to help the disadvantaged. But it certainly doesn't do that. The non-Asians and non-Whites who benefit from it usually, if not always, come from well-off families. It is for the elite. That's why they'd never do it based on family income.